Using HTML in e-mails... Help!

I am having an issue placing a black background in an e-mail newsletter I am sending out. Using Joomla, I cant get the body tag to stick when adding the code. Therefore my e-mails have a black background on top of a white background which I assume is the body. I have the black background behind the text and content using a div, but line spaces, and breaks show up white... Any help on how to work around not being able to use the <body> tag?